Sitting in the fore cabin nook of his Chip Ganassi Racing transporter at Watkins Glen International, an untouched salad before him and his wife, Emma, to his right, dabbing at hers, Dixon seemed discomfited as a boom microphone was dangled above him and a three-man documentary crew gathered content.

“Emma is used to it,” he joked of the production chronicling of his life and season. “I’m not.”

Even as a four-time Verizon IndyCar Series champion, fourth on the all-time wins list with 41, and the real-time embodiment of an open-wheel legend, the 37-year-old nevertheless eschews excess speculation about where his 17-year career fits in the grand scheme of racing greatness. He’s as much a master of deflecting too much personal plaudits as he is wielding one of Ganassi’s Chevrolets to the top of the driver standings when race dates and nerves of his competitors dwindle.

Dixon doesn’t revel in how much pressure he’s exerting on first-year Team Penske driver and points leader Josef Newgarden or lament the 60-to-80 points he believes eluded him, but he’s cognizant of how both dynamics will affect the ultimate outcome of his season.

Dixon felt he could have won the opener at St. Petersburg, where a mid-race caution he deemed “fabricated” sunk his car deep in the field ahead of a third-place finish. He led a race-high 32 laps at Long Beach and finished fourth. A potential double points bounty for winning the Indianapolis 500 was undone and overshadowed by a ghastly airborne wreck that left the pole winner relatively unscathed but hobbled with a 32nd-place result.

Dixon isn’t sure if his experience or success creates an advantage over a driver who could be forgiven an overreach attempting to validate the opportunity of a lifetime. If Dixon thinks he knows something that Newgarden can’t until he finishes a championship campaign, he’s not saying.

“I think the biggest thing is I’ve been on either side of the fence: going in as the points leader and going in behind by a significant amount,” Dixon told USA TODAY Sports. “The biggest thing is to keep an open mind as anything can happen.

“I think it’s knowing to never give up. Things have a strange way of working out different than how you thought.”

Such was the case in 2015, when Dixon entered the Sonoma final in third place, 47 points behind leader Juan Pablo Montoya, but used the double points from the victory to knot the Team Penske driver atop the standings and win the championship on a tiebreaker with three victories to Montoya’s two.

Newgarden’s self-described mistake running into a guard rail and subsequently being plowed from behind by Sebastien Bourdais at Watkins Glen eased Dixon’s latest comeback effort, as Newgarden’s 18tth-place finish, combined with Dixon’s runner-up effort, winnowed a 31-point lead to three. Newgarden said before the WGI race that his lead, which required three wins in his previous four races to build, was “nothing of comfort,” but after it, another Dixon late comeback was afoot.

It was a Ganassi comeback, though, Dixon said. And to his point, former teammate Dario Franchitti assumed the points lead after the final race of the season in winning titles in 2009 and 2010. He officially did the same in 2011 as the Las Vegas final was vacated after a crash occurred that claimed the life of two-time Indianapolis 500-winner Dan Wheldon.

“When they need to strike and when they need to make it happen … It’s like they have a good sense of confidence and what they need to achieve to they pull it off,” Dixon said of his crew. “I think this team in general is well known for that with several drivers they have had in the championship.

“For us, it has been one of those things where we have finished strong and maybe snatched it away a couple times. But you can analyze a season in so many different ways and each season maybe we should have been off. I found most of the time it kind of evens out when you get to the end of the season.”

Franchitti was more succinct.

“He’s absolutely relentless,” he said.

As much as he hopes his friend and former teammate overtakes Newgarden and wins a fifth IndyCar title on Sunday — pulling him within two of record-holder A.J. Foyt — retired four-time champion Franchitti said Dixon won’t have his greatness defined by it. He’s already there, he said, but they don’t consider it in the moment.

“For him, for the team, how they do it every weekend is ‘one more, one more’,” Franchitti told USA TODAY Sports. “It’s not a case of ‘Oh, I’ve won, four’. He’s very much focused on making it happen rather than what it would mean.

”But with him, every win adds something, doesn’t it?”

The only question remains is how the section of the film will end.

“I don’t know,” Dixon said, smiling at the prospect of it ending with this boom mic suspended above a fifth title celebration at Sonoma. “That would be a nice finish. So, either it’s going to be good or it’s gonna suck.”